I have been reading with interest, your forum, for a while now. I have also read all of the other forums and web sites. I started do the usual internet research on Morgellons just to see what I could find. I think I have found something pretty profound for you. There is a professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Dr. Neil H. Mendelson, Dept of Molecular and Cellular Biology. He has done extensive research on a bacteria called Bacillus subtilis. This bacteria, when grown in a TB medium, grows fibers called macrofibers, first in strands, then forming bundles of fibers. I won’t attempt to explain it further in my own words as I am not of a scientific mind. I will just let the article speak for itself and point you to the videos which will show the fiber bundles moving, writhing, and twisting. To me it is unbelievable. There are many papers published by Dr. Mendelson that you can read for yourself, but the article I am including is profound.

Bending, arching, writhing in the dim light, the slender forms pause for a languid moment. "That," says Neil Mendelson, a molecular biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, "is Bacillus subtilis making macrofibers." By twisting, coiling, and bending back on themselves, these colonies of bacteria create fibrous webs, eventually weaving themselves into what Mendelson calls "macrofibers" -- strands that look like Lilliputian ropes.

Fascinated by the physical properties of these bacteria -- their hearty cell walls made mostly from the two polymers peptidoglycan and teichoic acid -- the biologist wondered: Why not try to make something from this material?
After all, bacterial cell walls are strong, porous, flexible, and biodegradable. Tinkering further, he found that crystals would seed themselves and grow within the ethereal threads. With the soft structure of the fibers as a matrix, minerals evolved into crystalline networks, (some people have reported crystal-like properties) using the bacterial cell wall as a "structural backbone." Mendelson calls this new mineralized material "bionite."

Using bacteria -- which help digest the food we eat, decompose waste, and enrich soil -- to make materials is largely virgin territory; mineralizing bacterial fibers is unique. Can we make this material into something, and if so, what would its properties be? And are there any material design principles that we can learn from these cells? I think the bacterial cell wall, and these macrofibers in particular, can provide a very useful model of a self-organizing, self-assembling system for a material in nature." Electrically active and physically resilient, the spongy, porous gel can shrink or swell, bend, twist, stretch, or shear, then resume its normal shape. An affinity for charged particles, Mendelson says, enables the walls to rerain mineral deposits and form crystalline structures.

From simple macrofiber filaments come the bacterial threads, which provide natural templates for the mineralization process that generates bionites. Made from the bacteria's natural casing, bionites vaguely resemble fiberglass (some people have compared these threads to fiberglass) in appearance and texture.

Struggling to measure the forces of twisting and supercoiling, Mendelson has dragged filaments through gooey fluids, studied time-lapse videos, and measured the folding, bending, and "snap-opening" motions of filaments as they wind and unwind.

Then, adding copper, he saw that copper deposits showed up only after the threads had dried. Retaining their sinewy, fiberglass feel, the threads took on a silvery, blackish, or greenish hue. (aren’t these fibers typically different colors?) Further clues to the cell walls' properties. Whereas one iron bionite grew dark red and opaque, other versions brewed orange, translucent, cube-like crystals. By changing the ratios of calcium, phosphate, potassium, and other ingredients in the bacterial stew, both "platy" and "ball-like" crystals enmeshed themselves in the threads.

Intrigued by the idea that bionites might have unique nonlinear optical properties -- such that they could prove useful in fiber optics (doesn’t that new report by a doctor indicate that she found properties in her samples similar to fiber optics?) or microelectronics -- Mendelson brewed a web in potassium dihydrophosphate. Drawing and incubating the airy strands, he watched "KDP bionites" emerge -- long, hollow, tubular crystals protruding from the mineralized bacterial walls. (I looked up KDP and they are crystals)

The notion of using bacteria, which exist in such abundance and diversity, to make materials may be an idea whose time has come. "I think the general idea of cloning bacteria to excrete particular compounds, or making materials from cellular materials is very exciting," says Joel Schnur, a chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. "There are some very clever people exploring the possibility of using biological templates and mineralization for a purpose. The big question is, How can we use this knowledge for rational control?

"These are exploratory times in biomolecular materials," says Hagan Bayley, a biologist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Mass. Although we don't know exactly how this work will be applied, a lot of people have the gut feeling that something interesting will come of it."

I inserted my comments in parentheses This article clearly describes moving fibers that form into bundles; some are crystalline in nature; the fiber optics connection; the fibers producing different colors. And as is stated in the last sentence of the article, I do think that something interesting has come of it as this article is dated February 1994 and this is now 2006. Please view Dr. Mendelson’s videos as I think you will be definitely shocked.

Laura, you better believe it is involved. But it has a fungal component that is complex.

Befour,

Yes, I believe very much so that it is wastewater treatment. I think that is only a part of the thing but a VERY big part!!!! I think the Mississippi river is tainted with this now, plus a couple of more......Good to see you. Are you still wearing the copper?

I reacted horribly to it> well, just bad, not horrible.

TamTam. My doc will not give me the Amphotecerine B (sp?, sorry) What is your next suiggestion.......

Do you think it will eventually require chemo for the fungus?
___________________________________

I think Randy is right or is trying to help by saying don't bath, only shower but I think it is not just b/c of that but b/c maybe they just got a new shipment of waste to douse us with and maybe she was forwarning us. If so, Thanks Randy. I just know since last night my skin has taken a turn for the worse. Itching in a lot of places that do not have lesions.

It is rational to ask your GP for support with itraconazole.
Best would be pulse therapy combined with prolonged 200mg per day (up to six or more months) Next to topical econazole or sulconazole nitrate cream.

People also report effect with total body washings with selsun (selenium sulphite) Terramycine (skin and eye cream) is also effective and can be used for the eyes although fluconazole or itraconazole drops will be more effective (but must be made from an IV solution)

Again; topical administration can not do the job. Its a systemic disease.
Also it is not established that this type therapy will prevent a relapse.

Ask your GP for support!

Sincerely,

tamtam

Last edited by tamtam on Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:37 pm, edited 3 times in total.

more on biofilms in estuaries and marine areas, that would also effect waste water treatment, but this coming from the chimerics and proteobacterias:

The seven cloned sequences affiliated with the -Proteobacteria were related (range of levels of similarity, 93.6 to 95.1%) to several important marine bacterial groups, including the genera Pseudomonas, Alteromonas, Pseudoalteromonas, and Oceanospirillum, as well as to cultivated and uncultivated bacterial symbionts associated with marine invertebrates and algae. The results obtained by the distance and parsimony methods were also very consistent for the sequence affiliations within the -Proteobacteria (Fig. 2). The -Proteobacteria sequences accounted for 16.3% of the total primary colonist sequences recovered from the BR plates in both the previous study (14) and this study. "

AND

"Numerous diverse 16S rDNA sequences of members of the marine Rhodobacter group have been recovered from various marine ecosystems (12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22-24, 36, 41, 44), and this is clearly a significant and heterogeneous group of organisms."

Of these are:
Tam, do you think they are in this rhodobacter group?

"Probe selection, design, and optimization.
The DNA oligonucleotide probes employed for FISH were selected based on the types of sequences recovered from the 16S rDNA libraries (14) and are shown in Table 1. We used well-established probes for the Bacteria, Archaea, -Proteobacteria, -Proteobacteria, -Proteobacteria, and Rhodobacter group and, in addition, three new probes, R1, R2, and R3, that were designed to target three clusters of 16S rDNA sequences frequently recovered from members of the marine Rhodobacter group. The probes were evaluated by using the RDP II Check-Probe program (33) and were also checked by using the National Center for Biotechnology Information GenBank database and the advanced BLAST search program (2). Probe R1 targets sequences found in the Ruegeria atlanticum subgroup, probe R2 targets sequences found in the Sagittula stellata subgroup, and probe R3 targets sequences found in the Ruegeria algicola subgroup. The subgroups targeted by probes R1 to R3 do not include all members of the marine Rhodobacter group. "

CA, IL, WI: formerly norcardia......
"Previous studies have shown the predominance of mycolic acid-containing filamentous actinomycetes (mycolata) in foam layers in activated sludge systems. Gordona (formerly Nocardia) amarae often is considered the major representative of this group in activated sludge foam. In this study, small-subunit rRNA genes of four G. amarae strains were sequenced, and the resulting sequences were compared to the sequence of G. amarae type strain SE-6. Comparative sequence analysis showed that the five strains used represent two lines of evolutionary descent; group 1 consists of strains NM23 and ASAC1, and group 2 contains strains SE-6, SE-102, and ASF3. The following three oligonucleotide probes were designed: a species-specific probe for G. amarae, a probe specific for group 1, and a probe targeting group 2. The probes were characterized by dissociation temperature and specificity studies, and the species-specific probe was evaluated for use in fluorescent in situ hybridizations. By using the group-specific probes, it was possible to place additional G. amarae isolates in their respective groups. The probes were used along with previously designed probes in membrane hybridizations to determine the abundance of G. amarae, group 1, group 2, bacterial, mycolata, and Gordona rRNAs in samples obtained from foaming activated sludge systems in California, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The target groups were present in significantly greater concentrations in activated sludge foam than in mixed liquor and persisted in anaerobic digesters. Hybridization results indicated that the presence of certain G. amarae strains may be regional or treatment plant specific and that previously uncharacterized G. amarae strains may be present in some systems"
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/64/7/2503

The algae/bacteria symbionts? Not only in wasterwater treatment but in estuaries, marine habitat, etc. They could have only gotten there by massive releases, don't you think? Navy had some affiliation with it and many others.

Back to prokaryote and eukaryote symbiosis........
due the flagella...........

"In the marine environment, unicellular algae and other eukaryotic microorganisms, such as dinoflagellates, coexist with a diverse community of heterotrophic bacteria. Much of the carbon and nitrogen required for the growth of these bacteria is supplied by the unicellular bloom-forming eukaryotes (10). During feeding, stress, and lysis, nutrients are released from these microbes and made available to the bacteria. The nutrient plumes emitted occur on a microscale and are quickly dispersed and diluted by diffusion and turbulence (3). Over space and time not all species of bacteria are equally likely to obtain these nutrients (8). While some bacterial species rely upon high-affinity uptake mechanisms, the ability to sense and move towards increasing chemical gradients, known as chemotaxis, provides motile bacteria with a distinct advantage over their nonmotile counterparts (8). Knowledge of how marine bacteria sense and respond to algal cells is therefore important to our understanding of bacterial physiology and the interactions between these prokaryotes and their eukaryotic hosts and ultimately impacts our greater understanding of nutrient cycling in marine ecosystems."
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=492323

This is massive involves the sequestered carbon doesn't it, and the silica. Seems to fit..........

TamTam, Perhaps my question was overlooked. How exactly were you able to isolate this microorganism? What medium did you use, and from what or where did you acquire the samples to isolate this microorganism from? This isolation needs to be replicated, so please share this information as to save time and energy.